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Smersh and Scaramanga couldn’t do it, and neither could Oddjob or Sir Hugo Drax. But are millennials about to succeed where those others failed – and kill off James Bond?

In 2016, a YouTuber named Guru Kid uploaded a compilation of scenes from Bond movies that showed 007 forcing himself on women, or exploiting their vulnerabilities in order to get his leg over. Earlier this year that video went viral, co-opted as evidence for the prosecution in Bond’s trial by social media, as Ian Fleming’s creation was charged retrospectively with breaking the new post-Weinstein laws of appropriate behaviour.

How can a generation who are reportedly forswearing the pleasures of sex and alcohol have any interest...